To Fear a Painted Devil Read Online Free PDF Page B

of narrowing glass, he had seen walking past the gate, a tall fair man who rested a freckled hand on a dog’s head, a man who was strolling home to a beautiful well-dowered wife …
    With this glimpse there came into his mind a sudden passionate wish that this time things might for once go smoothly and to the advantage of Oliver Gage. He stood for a moment, thinking and planning, and then he realised that he had no wish to be herelike this in the darkness with his wife, and he reached quickly for the light switch.
    I t was fully dark, outside as well as in, when Denholm awoke. He blinked, passed his hands across his face and stretched.
    ‘Ah, well,’ he said to his wife, ‘up the wooden hill.’
    She had meant to save it all for the morning, but the hours of sitting silently beside the sleeping man had told on her nerves. His expression became incredulous as she began to tell him of the meeting on The Green.
    ‘He was pulling your leg,’ he said.
    ‘No, he wasn’t. I wouldn’t have believed him only I know you’ve been worried lately. You have been worried, haven’t you?’
    ‘Well, if you must know, things have been a bit dicey.’ She listened as the bantering tone left his voice. ‘Somebody’s been building up a big stake in the company.’ Only when he was talking business could Denholm shed facetiousness and become a man instead of a clown. ‘It’s been done through a nominee and we don’t know who it is.’
    ‘But, Den,’ she cried, ‘that must be Patrick!’
    ‘He wouldn’t be interested in us. Selbys are glass, nothing but glass and we’re chemicals.’
    ‘He would. I tell you, he is. He’s got that contract and he means to expand, to take you over. And it does rest with him. The others are just—what do you call it?—sleeping partners.’
    She would have to say it, put into words the grotesquefear that had been churning her thoughts the entire evening.
    ‘D’you know what I think? I think it’s all malice, just because you once hit that dog.’
    The shot had gone home, but still he hesitated, the jovial man, the confident provider.
    ‘You’re a proper old worry-guts, aren’t you?’ His hand reached for hers and the fingers were cold and not quite steady. ‘You don’t understand business. Business men don’t carry on that way.’
    Did they? he wondered. Would they? His own holding in the firm had decreased precariously as his family had increased. How far could he trust the loyalty of those Smith-King uncles and cousins? Would they sell if they were sufficiently tempted?
    ‘I understand people,’ Joan said, ‘and I understand you. You’re not well, Den. The strain’s too much for you. I wish you’d see Dr. Greenleaf.’
    ‘I will,’ Denholm promised. As he spoke he felt again the vague indefinable pains he had been experiencing lately, the continual malaise. ‘I’ll have a quiet natter to him tomorrow at the party.’
    ‘I don’t want to go.’
    Denholm did. Even if it was cold and there wasn’t enough to drink, even if they made him dance, it would be wonderful just to get away for one evening from baby-feeding at ten, from Susan who had to have a story and from Jeremy who never slept at all until eleven.
    ‘But we’ve got a sitter,’ he said and he sighed as from above he heard his son’s voice calling for a drink of water.
    Joan went to the door. ‘You’ll have to talk to Patrick.Oh, I wish we didn’t have to go.’ She went upstairs with the glass and came down again with the baby in her arms.
    Trying to console her, Denholm said weakly, ‘Cheer up, old girl. It’ll be all right on the night.’

4
    W hen he had been married to Jean, when indeed he had been married to Shirley, he had always been able to pay a man to clean the car. Now he had to do it himself, to stand on the gravel like any twenty-five pound a week commuter, squelching a Woolworth sponge over a car that he was ashamed to be seen driving into the office underground car park. There was,